


Carrion Flowers

by oracular_vernacular



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angel OC - Freeform, Angst, Apocrypha angels, Baggage!, Chloe BROKE UP WITH HIM, F/M, Fluffiness, Jewish angels, Luci and OC go waaaay back, Lucifer is a cunning linguist, PIV Sex, Plot With Porn, References to Bibical Angels, Smut, Squirting, and no before you say anything this OC is NOT Lucifer's sibling, can you have canon divergence from the bible?, i guess you can now, i'm not a supporter of incest plots anyway, like not every angel is directly related to Lucifer okay, no i won't apologize for that tag
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:02:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9570731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oracular_vernacular/pseuds/oracular_vernacular
Summary: After Detective Chloe Decker leaves, Lucifer becomes listless and depressed. He takes less and less interest in sex, his nightclub, and even- to Mazikeen's dismay- punishing the guilty. But one evening, someone from Lucifer's very, very long past reappears on stage at Lux, and the Devil finds himself consorting with angels. Or, what was once an angel, anyway.





	1. Transfixed on a Sin

The lights and the pulsing, electronic heartbeat of Lux were almost as exquisite as they had ever been. Mirrors reflected the glistening atmosphere, fracturing light into endless parallel universes. The place seemed to be breathing in unison, every club goer moving in a brilliantly precise pattern around every other one. The air was thick with desire, indulgence, and the mirth of debauchery. It was perfect, and the musical act for the evening hadn’t even taken the stage yet.

Lucifer Morningstar was paying attention to none of it. His tiny black straw whirled listlessly in his untouched glass of whiskey and ice. He stared into it, or he stared into the space in front of him where he might have seen the booming success his business was, had he not been too busy looking into a void. He had felt a great many things both in the presence of and regarding the presence of Detective Chloe Decker, but now all he felt was the immense hole in him that she had left.

“You know, it won’t do you any good to sit there and feel miserable,” Mazikeen said, approaching the VIP booth where her boss and infernal liege sat. “You might want to go and dance with some of the cute little girls and boys down there. Or at least play something on the piano, that seems to get your mood up where it belongs.”

“Maze, for the time being I will remain ensconced in my misery,” Lucifer said a little sharply. “If the spirit moves me I will descend, but for right now I’d just like to sit here and feel like shit if you don’t mind.” Maze looked both extremely frustrated and slightly annoyed.

“Alright, but don’t expect me to just let you rot in your feelings forever,” she said, turning away from the upper level booth and heading down the stars to the lower level and her busy bar. Lucifer did not watch her go, but he did manage a reluctant smile in the corner of his mouth for a moment. Maze was incredibly abrasive, but that always did feel familiar to him, and he knew it was her cover for the concern she felt for him. He had started to notice friendship in its tiniest forms lately, but his heart’s appreciation for it never lasted long before it reverted to deep melancholia.

The lights in the club dimmed almost to blackness, the signal that the performance was about to begin. Lucifer cast his eyes lazily over towards the stage, feeling obligated to stay and watch at least some of the show. He knew that Maze had been going out of her way to find acts that would make him proud of his club, picking dance music, DJs, and electronica artists that sounded unique and lent an edge to the club that others did not offer. He knew that the last week’s act had been a little too upbeat and bright for his tastes, but that was likely because most upbeat and bright things escaped his taste at that moment. The collective breath of the dance floor was held in, the air almost totally still for the briefest moment before a huge, fuzzy bass note split the air. Seconds into the bass, a liquid movement of electronic sounds began to lace its way through it, and the lights came up on the stage. The clubgoers seemed to be completely into it, dancing in the slow and sensual ways that the music elicited from them. On stage, a man in silver sunglasses was working at a keyboard and a Moog board at the same time. Another man was holding a black guitar and beside him were stacks of electronic equipment, on the floor an array of pedals. A shorter woman was playing the bass that seemed to be syncing the heartbeats of every human in the building, equipped with her own mess of pedals. In the center stage, not yet lit by any stage light, was a tall broad-shouldered figure standing before a microphone. Suddenly, the spotlight landed on the singer, and a voice rippled through the air, velvety and low and resonant. The show had begun.

Transfixed, Lucifer stared at the tall figure in the front center stage. If he had only been listening to the music, he would have said it was incredible, perfect for the club because it was almost carnal in its composition while also being dance-friendly in a dark, luscious way. It was hellish and beautiful and absolutely en theme. But he was not only listening. In fact, he was not only looking, either. He felt bewitched, and some part of him seemed to think that he was indeed being witched. Another part of him wanted to argue that it was impossible for him to be “witched” because not only was magic not real, but he was the King of Hell and despite being abdicated he was still immune to such manipulation. But the rest of him was unable to see anything else, hear anything else, or think at all. Something about that voice was almost….. supernal.

As if time had totally warped in on itself, he suddenly realized that the show was over and the regular DJ had resumed playing the floor off before close. Hours had passed. Lucifer felt less that he was snapping awake and more like he was emerging groggily from an incredibly long nap. But the moment lucidity returned to him, he realized exactly what had happened.

“MAZIKEEN!” he shouted in the direction of the bar. Below, Maze winced slightly at his beckoning. Rolling her eyes, she went back upstairs.

“What in the infernal blazes did you bring an angel into my club for?” Lucifer barked at her. Maze’s brow knitted in confusion.

“What do you mean, an angel?” she asked him, baffled. She certainly had not noticed any angels in the club that night, and if she had she’d have jumped at the opportunity to chew on one’s neck. She had been extremely deprived of violence in the wake of Ms. Decker’s departure.

“That was an angel on my stage just then!” Lucifer insisted, thrusting his watery whiskey in that general direction.

“Sir I have no idea—“ Maze began, but he cut her off.

“Take me to them! Now!” Maze, not a little bewildered, mouthed an ‘okay’ and shuffled away down the stairs with her master hot on her heels.

 

As the demon rounded the corner into the couched privacy booths on the other balcony of the club, she shuffled a little faster and made straight for a booth covered by a sheer curtain. Pulling the curtain back, she forced out a bastardization of a service smile.

“The owner—“

“ _You_ ,” Lucifer said suddenly, his eyes blazing as he stared straight at the broad-shouldered woman who had been singing. She sat at the very opposite side of the booth from where he was standing, the window behind her looking down on the crowd below. She had black hair that had been buzzed less than an inch from her head, broad shoulders made broader by the high cut neck of her dress, and a glass in her hand which she had been looking at. She did not look up at the Devil when he called her. There was a moment of hideously tense silence.

“Could they have a moment, please?” Maze asked, eyeing the rest of the band members. Looking confused and a little shaken, they all glanced at the singer. She gave the slightest nod, still staring into the clear liquid of her drink. They shuffled away, the other woman who had played bass leaning into the singer’s ear to whisper something that sounded like “just call me.” As soon as they left, Maze turned and followed them, giving a stare that betrayed her fear that she had failed her master. Lucifer simply continued to glare at his musical guest.

“Lucifer,” she said. Her eyes finally rose to meet his. They were large and brown and aeons old. The seemed to see straight through him while betraying nothing about her, except that she Was. And, he found himself thinking rather strangely, that she seemed rather sad.

“What on Father’s green earth are you doing in my house?” His eyes were flashing red, but meeting her gaze appeared to have confused him a little. There had always been such cold ruthlessness there before.

“I’m sorry, I did not know it was yours,” she replied matter-of-factly. “And your Father’s earth is losing its green, day by day.”

“Yes, and I am sure you had nothing to do with that,” he spat back at her.

“Not as much as you have, I’m certain.” This stung him. It was not his own work that had ever blighted the earth, but the demons in his employ were less scrupulous than he was. And for a very long time he had not taken an interest in curbing their destructive appetites.

“Why can’t Maze tell who you are?” he asked, his tone now flattened but still angry. This was probably the important question, but the last one he had on his mind.

“Because I am not who I was,” she replied, and the flicker of sadness in her eyes grew apparent even as it was still shielded by her composure. This perplexed him beyond anything else he had experienced that evening. Suddenly it was as if he was seeing her for the first time, before she turned to vengeance, before she had hunted and annihilated his demon acolytes mercilessly and became God’s wrath. When her hair had been long and golden, and her voice full of joyful song. A new pang of painful loss blossomed in his chest, his brow wrinkled in disbelief.

“Seraphiel,” Lucifer said, and he could not keep the note of tenderness out of his voice, “what happened to you?” There was a beat of silence between them, where their eyes said things human mouths could not say. Finally she took a deep breath through her nose and moved her glass a little, to break the tension.

“I fell,” Seraphiel said. Shock hit Lucifer like a cold blast of wind. He started to make sounds that he had meant to form into words, but she spoke again. “Or rather, I descended. I was cast out, but I did not go to hell, as I’m sure you noticed.”

“Believe it or not, I haven’t been spending much time down there lately,” the Devil replied. His expression still showed his confusion but his tone became almost casual.

“Well, that was the word on the street, but I have to say I hesitated to believe it,” Seraphiel said.

“Why, is my defying Father such a shock to you?” he asked. It was meant to be a joke, but the humor fled halfway through his question. Seraphiel just looked at him, an edge creeping into her gaze. Lucifer decided to skip that part of their conversation. “So what did you do to end up here on earth?”

“Your Father…” Her words trailed off for a moment as she struggled to find words. “He’s become a little… too cruel.” Lucifer seemed incredulous.

“As if he wasn’t before?” he retorted bitterly.

“This is worse than I’ve ever seen,” she replied, her voice serious. “It was too much for me.” A beat. Lucifer’s face invited her to continue. “I defied him. And so I was cast out. My wings were taken, and I found myself here.” Her summary was clipped showing she had no intention of elaborating more.

“I hate to be hard but I struggle to fathom what cruelty he could have asked you to enact that you would have found to be ‘too much,’” Lucifer replied. His anger had returned a little.

“I cannot blame you,” she admitted, looking back down at her drink remorsefully. “I would not have come here if I had known it was your place, I don’t want to upset you or fight you or any of that. I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” He really had thought he was as shocked as he was capable of being already. The lack of passionate hatred coming from Seraphiel was strange enough to him, but the presence of regret was almost unbelievable. The silence was palpable. She looked at her drink but not into it.

“I can’t say I expected to hear that from you ever again,” he said, and felt the caution rising in him. Was this a ruse? A trap? If it was, it was profoundly unlike her to be this dramatic. She was never one to express a feeling she did not actually feel. Her eyes rose to meet his once more. Just as she was about to speak, a huge blast of noise came over the sound system, and a cheer went up from the crowd. Someone had requested “Don’t Stop Believing.” He absolutely hated it when that happened.

“Shall we go upstairs to my rooms to talk, maybe?” he asked her, his mouth a thinly stretched line of irritation. Seraphiel almost smiled and nodded. Lucifer rose, opened the curtain for her, and led her to the master stairwell.


	2. Devil's Right Hand

Mazikeen came upstairs at nine in the morning to check on her master as she often did on days when he had a lot of business to attend to. He had three appointments that day, and she was rather hoping that he would actually attend them and not leave her to sweet-talk (or mean-talk) their contacts into another date and time. He had been doing that a lot lately. Maze thought it was pitiful, how much like a wounded creature he was behaving. Part of her suspected that his humanity, mysteriously brought on by the Detective, was responsible for his pain. Which made Chloe Decker responsible for his pain, which made her hate Chloe Decker a little bit, even if she thought his pain was irritating and irrational.

“Sir?” she called as she entered the entertainment suite. To her surprise, Lucifer was sitting at one end of one of the long couches, holding a cup of back coffee, and _laughing_. On the other end sat the singer from the night before, also holding a cup of coffee and also laughing. What was more surprising than that to the demon was that they were both still wearing exactly the same clothes, with the exception of a slightly too-large hoodie that the woman had thrown on over her dress. Maze knew it was Lucifer’s hoodie, but beyond that she wondered if she knew anything anymore. The puzzle did not complete itself at all.

“Sir?” she asked again, and the Devil turned to look at her. His smile felt almost jarring after its months-long absence.

“Yes, my darling Mazikeen, what is it?” he asked her jovially. Maze tried to hide her total lack of comprehension (and her ravenous interest in figuring out what the hell was going on) by holding the folio she was carrying up closer to her face and looking at it.

“Ah, you have a meeting at noon and two more this evening. All with investors, except the last one is with your accountant.”

“Oh, bugger. I have absolutely no interest in talking to that little mouse of a human being today,” Lucifer complained.

“I don’t blame you, but it’s been rescheduled twice already,” Maze pointed out, irritated.

“Third time’s the charm,” Lucifer replied, smiling his old sly smile. “Reschedule everything. Today I think we need to catch up with our old friend,” He turned back to face the singer, whose face showed a somewhat embarrassed expression.

“She’d be right to gut me even as we sit here,” the tall woman said. Maze felt her hackles rise.

“Who are you, anyway?” the demon growled.

“Oh Maze, you’ve met Seraphiel,” Lucifer said, grinning a little. He loved to watch Maze freak out a little. Until it yielded something breaking, at least.

“YOU?” Mazikeen screeched, staring at her. “What in the nine hells are you doing here? Why didn’t I know it was you?”

“I’m not an angel anymore, Maze,” Seraphiel sighed. “I’m not even a demon. Not sure what I am, to be honest.” Maze looked at her, then looked at her master, then back at her, then back to her master. It was almost comical.

“What the hell did she do?” was all she could think to say.

“She defected,” Lucifer replied. “Apparently Father has gotten a little too vengeful even for her.” Maze unwittingly mimicked her master’s initial expression of disbelief when he had heard the same news.

“I promise, Maze. I didn’t even intend to be here. I’ve been wandering this rock for a while now, but I frankly never would have expected to find the two of you up here cavorting among the humans. Although, I can kind of see the appeal, maybe,” Seraphiel finished a little mysteriously. Maze just stood there, looking at her old enemy, slightly crouched as if she would have to spring into battle at any moment. She seemed genuine, and usually demons could tell if someone was lying. She had always been bluntly honest— but she had also always been cruel, relentless, and profoundly cold, at least as long as Maze had known her. But Lucifer had known her much longer, had been hurt much more deeply by her, and here he was drinking coffee and laughing ( _laughing!_ ) with her. And all so chastely, too.

“Maze, it’s alright,” Lucifer implored to his lieutenant.

“How can it be alright?” Maze asked, but instead of seeming angry she just seemed resigned and upset. Visions of what Seraphiel had done to her brethren kept surfacing in her memory. Not that she was particularly fond of many other demons, but it had still been frightening even to her and she had always been keenly aware that if she was ever in the Pure One’s way, she would meet oblivion just the same. The worst part to her was how there would have been no delight in her enemy’s eyes, no deliciousness in seeing her suffer or perish. God’s justice was mechanically brutal, and more horrific than torture because it was so quick. Instantly she would have been slain, her very essence obliterated, no more important to her foe than a patch of bramble that needed to be cut out of the way. It was terrifying to know that look of utter devotion to God in the eyes of his avengers.

“Believe me when I say that this is not even remotely the usual circumstance for any of the Fallen, and I intend to investigate it as much as I can,” Lucifer told Maze in a voice that was a little more tender than the demon was used to, but just as firm as always. “But she is released from Father’s love, and you know how that changes all of us.”

“I’ll reschedule your meetings for today, then,” was all the reply Maze made before turning away from her master and exiting the suite. Lucifer watched her go, frustrated that she was so resistant but incapable of holding it against her. He turned back around and was surprised to find an expression of pain on Seraphiel’s face.

“She’ll get over it,” he assured her.

“There’s no reason that she should,” she said, looking at the ground. “There’s no reason she should not fear and hate me. I wielded your sister’s sword in your Father’s name and I thought I was right. No, it’s worse than that. I never thought. I never thought about anything. I just did what he willed me to do, and he knew that my bitterness would let me keep doing it.”

“Sera…” It was Lucifer’s turn to feel guilty.

“I never knew how easy it was to stop feeling anything at all. But after you fell…” She looked at him again, and it hurt his already raw heart. “After that, I wanted to feel nothing. So He let me. He gave me the task of Purification, and he let me annihilate millions of souls. I felt nothing at all about it, but that I was doing His will. I loved Him,” Her voice almost broke. “And I followed you. I trusted you, and we held forth together. And then you left, and after all my abominable devotion he cast me out, and now all I can feel is everything. I can feel _everything_ , Lucifer. I think it must be my punishment, to never be able to stop feeling. I feel my guilt and my regret every minute, and I feel everything going on around me, I feel every single stupid awful feeling these humans have, and it’s unimaginable.” Her eyes were watering now, and as much as it pained him he could not look away from them. “It’s awful, Luci. It’s awful and I don’t know why refusing to keep hurting you was what made me deserve it. I wanted to bring souls to the light, not banish them from God forever. But He’s grown opaque, and I don’t pretend to know what His plan is anymore.” She trailed off in defeat, overwhelmed. Lucifer wanted badly to touch her, to comfort her, but he felt that she would not appreciate the gesture very much.

“My old General,” he said to her, leaning forward. “I don’t know if it matters much, but I am sorry. When I defied Father, I believe I was thinking only of myself, as I have so often done. It did not occur to me that it would bereave you so for me to be cast out.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, but it was the truth. He had never imagined that she would have missed him so, even as close as they had once been. They had once led the Armies of Light, she as his right-hand and advisor. They had been friends, and they had fought together. He had always felt especially wounded that his Father had chosen her to become the Pure One, to rain down his retribution on the unfaithful and the Fallen. She was now sitting a little more upright, her eyes closed. He waited patiently for whatever moment she was experiencing to pass.

“In the end, it’s not you who should be apologizing,” she said finally, looking at him again. “In the end, you would have been cast out anyway. You were too willful, and He was too stubborn. I was the one who overreacted, in the end.”

“That’s hardly fair, I mean Father just used your pain to make you into his vengeance machine,” Lucifer defended. Seraphiel gave a humorless laugh.

“I knew what the job entailed. Or at least, what it used to entail. It got worse as it went along, but my bitterness kept me from seeing it. My pain was a good enough reason to obliterate legions, especially if that was His will. All of them, nobody knows where they’ve gone, or what it means to simply Not Be anymore. I took humans at your Father’s bidding,” she confessed.

“Really?” he asked, a little appalled.

“Yes. Thousands of them. No one was safe once he had commanded it.”

“You always were good at your job,” he offered limply. She half-smiled anyway.

“Perilously so.”

For a few minutes, everything was quiet except for the distant, muffled sound of the city of Los Angeles outside the enormous glass windows. Lucifer felt like he had been put in a washing machine and spun around wildly, only to be dropped onto his feet and expected to walk a straight line. To have his most recent life turned upside down and then his most ancient life do the same was a lot to take in. He wasn’t sure what to say, but the silence wasn’t awkward. He hadn’t felt the need to forgive her yet, despite their history. _Probably because you know you abandoned her,_ said his mind gently. It was hard to play anyone false while she was around, even himself.

“So what happened to you then, Prince of Darkness?” Seraphiel asked him after a little while. “I didn’t mean to drag out my problems before hearing about yours.”

“It’s hardly comparable,” he said, shaking his head.

“But you are so sad,” she replied, as if she were describing how pale or how tall he was. He looked at her, a little unnerved.

“You can tell, huh?” he asked. She nodded. It seemed that her statement of being able to feel everyone around her’s feelings was not an exaggeration. Lucifer sighed.

“Well, it all started when my friend Delilah was murdered.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, it will descend into fluffy smut later. And might even reveal just what exactly happened to Miss Decker.


	3. Devil May Cry

As the sun began to fill the sky with blood-red and orange light, the city of Los Angeles began to awake from its sleepy daytime heat. Lights began blinking on, the ambient sound of traffic and music and the ever-present drone of the ocean, which when this close by seemed to be everywhere, however faintly. Lucifer stood on the roof of a bar, for once not his own, watching the night descend. He had been feeling a need to put himself in uncomfortable places lately, and despite his reputation it was quite uncomfortable for him to be outside of the places he already controlled. But the discomfort of loss, and the human grief he felt always lingered in the back of his mind, made a little displacement welcome. It helped him focus on something else.

“Lucifer,” Mazikeen said, waving a hand up in front of his face, trying to recapture his attention.

“Apologies, Maze,” he said, turning back to look at her. Her expression remained irritated, but it was the irritation he knew lay as a thin blanket over her concern.

“I was trying to tell you that I’m kind of wondering when this little mope-fest will end, because it stinks of humanity, and to be perfectly honest I was really hoping that whole thing might be out of the picture by now,” she told him in an emphatically aggravated tone.

“I’m rather tired of it myself, Maze, but I don’t actually know what the bloody hell to do about it, or I would have done that thing already,” He felt himself just as frustrated with his own feelings as he was with Maze’s persistent harassment.

“Isn’t this the kind of thing that humans go see their psychiatrists about?” Maze asked him, one eyebrow lifted. The scarred one. He saw it sometimes and was reminded just how majestically, terrifyingly sexy she was. It made him proud that she served him, though he would never say that to her, of course. He mulled over her suggestion for a moment.

“I suppose it is,” he said, his gaze drifting back out over the skyline. “But I’ve been so unmotivated to go lately,” Maze rolled her eyes.

“Most humans feel that way when they are in grief. There’s something alluring about being in pain, to them,” said a low voice. Maze’s eyes flashed as Seraphiel approached the two of them.

“You came to a club wearing _that_?” Maze snarled, looking her up and down disdainfully. Sera was wearing a white button down with the sleeves rolled up at her elbows, tucked into slim black jeans and a belt with a gold buckle. She had on little black leather loafers. Maze, on the other hand, was in a deep red cocktail dress, a delicate gold chain trailing down into the deep V of her neckline, and her trademark black stilettos (this time in the form of a snakeskin bootie.) Visually, the two were perfect foils for each other. Maze also knew she was being petty, but she had to do something to make herself feel better since apparently the ex-angel was staying, for now.

“I’m not looking to meet anyone,” Seraphiel replied, “and you have more fun bedding strangers than I do. You should be successful, you do have a few heads bobbling at you even as we speak,” Maze felt herself cast around the rooftop crowd, still a little sparse this early in the evening, and caught at least three guys who kept glancing at her. She felt her lip curl into a grin but then caught herself.

“You don’t need to flatter me,” the demon hissed. “I still don’t trust you,”

“Seems fair,” was Sera’s infuriatingly even reply. Maze scowled at her, then at her master, who was simply watching the exchange with a bemused expression.

“I’ll go hunt some bobbleheads then, shall I?” she huffed, and sauntered off. Seraphiel watched her go, then turned back to Lucifer.

“Who would have thought Maze would make such a beautiful human?” she asked him. There was no hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“I knew she would, of course, because look at me,” the Devil replied, giving her a cocky grin. “The province of lust is ours, after all.”

“I guess as an angel, I never thought much about it,” she confessed, swirling the tiny black straw in her drink.

“Imbibing, are we?” Lucifer asked, glancing at the glass.

“Only seltzer and bitters and lime, I’m afraid,” she replied, giving a little sly grin. Lucifer felt a funny ripple in his gut. An angel had never looked at him mischievously before. Cocky, sure. They always felt they had the upper hand, for obvious reasons. Even without the golden hair, and the holy light in her eyes long dead, she was a soft place for the eyes to land. Her skin seemed to glow from within, and her features were strong but smooth. A strange contrast to his own, he thought, despite their now similar hair and eye colors. He knew he was a little ruddy, and a little scruffy, and his cheekbones made for a glorious and intimidating frame for his otherwise fine features. He was noticing a lot of what other people looked like that day, he thought. He had noticed the strangest things since Chloe left. But the thought pained him, so he returned to the game.

“Ah, too good for it are we?” he joked.

“Certainly not. After I fell, I was excessively fond of it. Among other substances,” she replied.

“I hate to think I missed your debaucherous phase! What cleaned you up, then?”

“A rather unpleasant experience. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime,” Sera looked at him from the side before looking back down at her drink, where she poked the little slice of lime with her straw fruitlessly.

“I don’t think I’m in the mood for sad stories either, today,” Lucifer admitted, placing his drink down on the wide concrete ledge that made a lip around the roof. He rested his elbows there as well, leaning over a bit and watching tiny human forms shuffle down the street below.

“I wanted to talk about how you find this whole humanity thing,” the ex-angel said to him a little conspiratorially. “I’ve certainly not had anyone I could talk to about it, from our perspective and all,” Lucifer grinned and turned to look at her.

“What about it, the sex or the pain?” he asked, almost sarcastically. Seraphiel leaned back onto the ledge, the sunset behind her. Lucifer couldn’t help but notice her bum rested up against the corner of it. It was a cute bum. Really cute.

He felt an almost guilty twist in his stomach as he realized who he was checking out. Part of him was still a little bit horrified, because the last time they had known each other in anything like a friendly capacity lust had been well and truly beyond them both.

“Really either, both are strange. And don’t they go together sometimes?” she asked, grinning that mischievous grin again. _Oh Father,_ he thought. _I don’t know what to do about this at all._ He cleared his throat.

“They do, rather. But it’s not for the faint of heart, I think. Or the faint of nerve endings,”

“I meant emotionally, but yes. I know about kinky sex,” Seraphiel rolled her eyes. “I should have assumed that was the first place you’d go with that,”

“You are talking to the Devil, darling,” he said, giving her his own trademark grin.

“And you’re talking to a fallen angel,” she reminded him. “I’m not a virgin, you know,”

“I have to admit, I have been struggling with the idea of your sexuality, but only because of how long ago we last shared amiable conversation,”

“Well, you’ve made a reputation of yours, otherwise I might say the same,” she laughed.

“I did, rather. But I’ve had more than one kind of human sexual encounter now, I suppose,” Everything was coming back to Chloe, all the time, and it was driving him mad.

“Ah, the one night stand versus the emotional long-term partner. I’ve heard they’re worlds apart,” she looked at him and smiled almost apologetically. “We don’t have to talk about it,” she offered.

“No, it’s okay. I obviously can’t stop thinking about it. They are worlds apart, by the way. Which one have you preferred?”

“Actually,” she said, a little embarrassed, “I’ve only had the latter. But I’ve had it for one night, as well as for longer.” Lucifer stared at her, brow knitted.

“How the blazes does that work?” he asked, baffled. How could you love someone for only one night?

“I think it’s the feeling thing. I feel a lot of feelings about sex. I don’t necessarily have the inclination to fall in love with the other person and follow them around for the rest of forever, but in the night that I am with them, I feel love for them,” she explained.

“Sounds bloody awful!” he exclaimed. She only laughed, which had the strange effect of eliciting admiration from him.

“It’s not so bad. It’s hard to explain. Sure, I’ve had my heart broken, if that’s what that means. But I think I broke my fair share of hearts. It’s hard to do things like look people in the eyes during sex and then explain to them that you’re just not that into them. Which, why are humans so afraid of that anyway?” Lucifer blanched a little.

“Well I don’t know about humans, but that’s terrifying to me,” he admitted.

“You never looked your lost one in the eyes?” she asked, and seemed almost sad for him.

“I mean, I probably did. But it was always rather short lived,”

“Oh. So you approached the abyss but didn’t fall in, huh?” Her smile was not cruel. It was compassionate, and a little wry. Lucifer was feeling less and less like he knew how to navigate such an emotionally honest conversation, but the void in him left by Chloe seemed to propel him straight into the maw of it. He wanted to spill his guts, and Seraphiel seemed like the safest person in the world to become pitiful in front of. He was almost more terrified of that feeling, because after Chloe he felt almost no inclination to be vulnerable again. And yet, here he was.

“I suppose you could say that I veered a hard left away from the abyss,” he said, defeated. It was coming out now, there was no staunching the flow. He felt like crying.

“Humans do that a lot, Lucifer,” she said gently. “I had more than one who ran away from me after our night together. Who woke up the next morning absolutely spooked, and left me alone. They had a lot of reasons, of course. Everybody does,” Lucifer looked back at her face.

“It’s horrible feeling all this shit, sometimes,” he said, smiling through the heat rising to push at the back of his eyes. _Not in public, you vast moron._

“It really is. We weren’t made for the weight,” To his shock and immense comfort, she reached out and brushed her fingers against his temple before running then through his hair. “We can go back to your place if you want. They will come if I remain with you. But I will go if you’d rather stay here,”

It was too late. The fingers in his hair had already unraveled something within him, something that was dying for him to pull the ends and rip the rest apart as well.

“Let’s go home,” She nodded and silently led him off of the roof by the hand. It didn’t seem motherly or sexual. It seemed so much like pure, genuine concern. He kept staring at her hand around his, totally unable to parse the soup of emotions that was boiling inside of him. He glanced up just as they approached the exit door to see Maze looking directly at him, watching over him. Watching him. It meant a lot at that moment, that she watched him. It meant even more that when she saw the expression on his face, hers softened. The stern worry mixed with a more forgiving one, and she seemed to understand that he needed to go home and feel something, finally. He gave a halfhearted smile. She returned it, but only around her mouth. Her eyes would not feign mirth.

 


	4. To Beg Forgiveness

Once they arrived at the loft, Lucifer poured himself a glass of whiskey.

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to numb the pain,” Seraphiel said to him, brow furrowed. “That never works, you know,”

“Darling I’ve been trying for some weeks now, and I am well aware that it doesn’t work,” he replied.

“Don’t call me darling, Luci,” Her look was knowing. “I won’t have you forget that we were equals,”

“Technically, I outranked you,” he pointed out.

“Technically, yes. But in skill we were well matched. There’s a reason I was an Imperatrix,” Her mouth curled again. His stomach flopped. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with these violent oscillations between grief and lust. Was it lust? It didn’t feel like the lust he knew so well. It didn’t feel like love either, or at least not like what he had felt for Chloe.

“Fair point,” he acquiesced. “Aren’t we here for me to talk about my feelings?”

“I’m not a therapist, Lucifer. I just wanted you to feel safe with whatever came up for you while we talked. I was personally going to ask you how you feel about this orgasm thing that humans do. What are yours like?” She had decided to lose her shoes and belt and was now sitting on top of the marble island while he sat at the stool with his whiskey. He almost laughed.

“That’s a little forward,” he replied.

“I’m just wondering! Come on Lucifer, it’s _different_ , isn’t it?” She seemed truly excited and interested in his response. He let a breath out through his nose while he thought about the answer.

“I mean, it’s different from anything I felt before I fell. And it’s a little different now that apparently I’m mortal, or whatever I am,” he said. Her eyebrows shot up.

“It’s different now too? That’s so strange. What do they feel like?” He was almost uncomfortable, but at the same tim found himself hunting for a truly accurate description.

“Well they always felt nice, obviously. They were like electricity running all through you and pushing some kind of knotted up feeling out of you. Like all the muscles got to squeeze out all the tension and strain and it’s such a relief,” He didn’t feel that was quite the perfect way to put it, but it was close. “What about yours?”

Hilariously, she seemed almost to blush. “Okay, well. Humans have told me that mine are… big,”

“Big?” he asked, curious. “How so?”

“Just that I tend to ah, move. A lot. Sometimes I kick,” Lucifer’s eyebrows shot straight up, his interest now avid. “And I mean, it feels like I’m being punched through a hole into some other world, sometimes. But punched in the best possible way. And it tends to go on, a little, in these waves. They just feel so warm and almost overwhelming, but I like that. I like to be a little overwhelmed, I guess,”

“Well well,” he teased her. “You sound like you’ve got quite the appetite, after that little fall you took,”

“Maybe. Some kind of appetite,” she replied, her eyes looking off somewhere far away from a moment before darting back. “It’s a lot of feelings, though. It’s not just physical. Sometimes it makes me cry,” Lucifer felt his heart sink again, away from the fun he’d just been having into the viscerally clear memory of his last night with Chloe.

“Yes, I do believe that sometimes the body and the mind will work together to make one happy. And then, miserable, of course,”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know that these things are a little more common for me than for you. I don’t mean to rub salt in a wound,”

“Ah, well. It’s strange how much I feel like shit about it lately yet I never actually find myself remembering these things. Until we talk about them, anyway,” He looked at her. She was disheveled, sitting on the marble tabletop with bare feet, legs crossed, leaning towards him with her elbows on her knees. She looked at him, slouched over his stool, lean and handsome. Not that different from when they had fought together, not that different from when they had fought each other, and yet something was changed.

“You have to go through all that shit eventually, or so I’ve heard,” she advised him. “Sometimes that’s the only way to stop just feeling like shit, with no clear way out,”

“I think you must be right, but you’re the first person I’ve been at all interested in talking to about it. I’m supposed to go and see my psychiatrist, it would seem, but at this moment her all-knowingness is getting on my nerves just imagining it,” he said, looking distastefully at his glass. “‘Oh, this is what we do when we suffer loss, Lucifer, we run away, because it bloody _hurts_ , and we’re bloody _cowards_ ,’” His mimicry of Dr. Martin was giving way to vitriol and he found his cheeks burning.

“It does hurt,” Sera said. “It’s so funny that we all cling to this idea that love doesn’t hurt, or shouldn’t hurt. I can’t even limit this observation to humans. You’d think we’d have learned by now,”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” he replied, and he felt the heat behind his eyes again. “But it’s so much like a drug. I had always been the drug, not the addict. And I felt myself becoming the addict, and I ran away,” Sera looked at him, and her eyes seemed even more ancient than they always had. She was listening very earnestly. “I ran away, but I didn’t have the courtesy to actually run. I stayed there, getting my fix, but not committing to anything. Not letting anything genuine about my heart be revealed. I don’t know what possessed me to think that she wouldn’t get tired of it, eventually,” They were coming now, the tears. They pooled in the corners of his eyes. He felt a habitual shame come up with them.

“I’m not very good at crying either, Luci,” the ex-angel offered. “But it’s bollocks. You can cry. Like you said. It bloody hurts. Much worse than any wound of the flesh I’ve ever been given,” Lucifer felt one fat tear fall down the crevice between his nose and his cheek. It landed, salty and warm, in the corner of his mouth.

“It hurts to know how much I did the same to her, or worse,” he admitted. “I can’t imagine being treated the way I treated her,”

“Ah, the golden rule,” Sera made sure her wistful smile wasn’t too big. She wasn’t trying to detract from the Devil’s pain, but she was accustomed to smiling ironically at her own.

“Cursed rule. It always ends up that I should have fucking followed it,” he swore. There were more tears now. They came almost at a rhythm.

“The first time I really followed it, I was cast out of Heaven,” Sera said, as if numb to the shock of it, or at least familiar with the feeling. Lucifer looked up at her, blinking the water from his eyes.

“What do you mean?” he asked, confused.

“Lucifer, I meant it when I said that I didn’t want to hurt you anymore. I refused God’s command, and I was truthful when He asked me why. What he asked was too much, and I knew that I’d already spent what felt like an eternity putting thorns in your side, or sometimes maybe a proper gash,” She smiled at him, the kind of smile that stood in for an apology. “I wouldn’t want to have someone torture me relentlessly like that, make it so difficult for me to either have much fun or do my job. I refused, and He cast me out. I hear that’s about the time you decided to quit Hell,”

“You refused to hurt me? He commanded you to hurt me?” Lucifer felt the same betrayal he had always felt when he thought about his Father, but it was white-hot and fresh.

“Not to harm your person. He wanted me to take out Maze,” Seraphiel confessed. Lucifer stared at her, mouth agape, eyes filled with horror. “But by that time, something like empathy had started to creep in. Watching too many humans die, maybe. They are far from ruthless in the moments before death, like we are. They are afraid, always afraid, and pitiful. I couldn’t have killed her. Not after all this time, knowing she protected you. She was Fallen, and sometimes I think God finds them suitable pawns for his scheme. It’s as if he forgot where they came from,”

Lucifer felt like he was being fed into a meat grinder. The emotions coming over him were relentless, staggering in their impact.

“Why would Father ask that of you?” he asked, shaken.

“To make you more vulnerable, I think. I know not why, but that has always been my guess. But it would have been too much. For me to do, at least, even after feeling so abandoned. All those years later and after the things I did, I know, but still. I cannot promise that someone else might not come along and try it. But that was six years ago, and you’ve been up here growing more vulnerable anyway, it seems,” She looked at him. She seemed to be feeling more emotions than her face could express too, he thought. He felt warmth blossom inside of him, tempering his new fury with his father. Seraphiel had spared Maze, to save him that heartbreak. It would have broken him in some way, to lose her. His guardian, who kept him safe.

“Thank you,” he said to her finally, his heart feeling swollen for the first time in a long time. “For not doing it,” Sera felt her eyes begin to water after a moment of silence, and she was surprised by her own intense relief at hearing his gratitude. How much she truly felt that she did not deserve it, and yet he gave it freely, and almost instantly. It did not seem like enough to make up for all of her other cruelty, but the demon must have been at least as important to him as she once was.

“Anytime,” she tried to joke. He stood up off of the stool, and their heads were at the same height. _He was always very tall,_ she thought. “I’m sorry that it was painful anyway. Chloe was a different kind of vulnerability, but all of it hurts,” she added. He screwed the lid back onto his whiskey bottle.

“And this, sitting here with you, is another kind entirely,” he pointed out. She seemed to blush through her tears.

“I’m not trying to manipulate—“

“You’d better not be,” he cut her off, and then before she knew what was happening he was cradling her face in his hands, their noses perilously close. His eyes were still filled with tears that had not fallen. His touch, sudden and fiercely tender, brought her closer to spilling her own.

“Samael,” she breathed, and it was like a plea, even a prayer.

His mouth was over hers almost before his name left her lips, because from her it was a blessing, it was pure light, and he didn’t want anyone else to have it. He kissed her hungrily, starving for the light that she brought, that he had been denied for such a long time. Her mouth was like home, and she tasted like relief and comfort and joy. Finding her pliant, he slipped his tongue between her lips. Her hands began to gently slide up the front of his shirt, just then, and he felt the familiar constriction in his groin. Then she wrapped her legs around his waist, grinding her sacrum into him, and his desire flared instantly. He did not even think about how the purity in her mouth and the heat between her legs did not, ostensibly, belong together. He certainly did not think about how bizarre and quite possibly blasphemous it would be to take her then and there, because that what exactly what he planned on doing. 


	5. Joyful Noise

The Devil’s hands began to tug the shirt out of Seraphiel’s waistband, and to quickly fumble the buttons apart. Her hands had snaked up to his hair and were now gripping the back of his head, sending bright tingling sensations all over his shoulders and down his spine. Finally her shirt fell open, revealing her beautiful clavicle and her pert breasts. He tore his mouth away from hers and began to kiss her jaw, moving slowly downward as his hands sought to run over every available inch of her skin. Suddenly he felt her tug at his collar, pulling the first button apart insistently.

“If I show you mine…” she whispered into his ear, and he had to smile through his glazed eyes as he helped her remove his shirt. It fell away to reveal his muscled shoulders and chest, which she looked at with a slightly feral gnaw on her lower lip. Seeing an angel fall into sin, it turned out, was really hot. He dove back into her collar bone, biting her gently, which elicited the most delicious whimpering noise from her. He could feel her hands sliding down his back.

He was shocked to find that when she touched his scars, it felt like a balm being spread over them. It felt soothing like nothing else had. He wondered how much his past was going to haunt him, if this carried on. But nothing seemed worthy enough to stop his mouth from descending to her breast, or kissing her nipple to watch it stand up, or its twin do the same. His hands began to search for and undo the button of her jeans. Pulling the front of them apart, he wrapped one strong arm around her lower back and lifted her off the marble just long enough to swipe her jeans off. He ran his hand along the skin on her ass as he did so, watching the goosebumps spread after it. He grinned up at her as he worked the jeans the rest of the way off.

“You’re not wearing any underwear,” he accused her, delighted. Her only reply was to look into his eyes with the mischievous look he was growing to adore, but with a healthy dose of lust thrown in. Normally he would have made some ‘naughty girl’ quips right about now, but he felt all need for performance had fallen away from this particular situation a long time ago. He took a moment to lean back a little and take in the sight of her cunt, her legs opened just enough for it to beckon to him. The white shirt was still on her shoulders, the open front showing her supple torso flowing into her now exposed hips and her lean, powerful legs. He felt compelled to kiss her again, his awe apparent. She gasped into his mouth as he ran the tips of his fingers over the lips of her cunt and over the engorged bud that crowned them, and he felt the joyful power of making another person feel so much pleasure beginning to come over him.

“You’re already so wet,” he breathed, his lisp still touching hers as she began to suck in breath after breath. His fingers gently swirled over her clit, and he felt her buck slightly when the tips of his fingers strayed too near her entrance.

“Lucifer…” Sera whimpered, beginning to crave him.

“I love that you revert to my unholy name when you want me to fuck you,” he growled into her mouth. He began to swirl his fingers around the opening of her sex, which was much worse than what she had already complained about. She let out a groan and braced herself on the table top with her hands behind her. He dipped one long, devilish finger inside her. She shuddered at the sensation of it. He slipped two in this time, experimentally. She was almost innocently tight. He felt lust beginning to overwhelm him. But he wanted to see something first.

“Lie down,” he told her, and it was almost a command. She melted into his hand on her back and he guided her all the way down until she was lying on the cold marble with her knees pointed up at the ceiling and her feet gripping the edge of the table. The white shirt made a beautiful backdrop for her torso, cloaking her broad, androgynous shoulders in soft clouds. Lucifer snuck another admiring look at her before he gently took her under the knees and spread her apart, a glistening trail of desire already running down her ass cheek. He almost felt he should say grace.

“Oh God,” she swore, after his head sank down to take her clit into his mouth, where he pressed the flat of his tongue against it. His fingers found their way back to her entrance and curled up into her, pushing against exactly the right spot. After a while he worked a third finger into her, and by then she was breathing rapidly, whimpering and moaning and cursing at him as his tongue played its hymn on her clit, the pressure building and her cunt clamping down harder and harder onto his fingers. Finally, the blessed words spilled out of her mouth.

“It’s coming,” Seraphiel gasped. “Lucifer, I’m so close, Lucifer!,” He did not stop curling his fingers as much as he could, nor cease his ministrations to her clit as he felt her entire lower body begin to contract, trying to push him out, but he was inhumanly strong and very consciously applying that strength. His other hand pressed down on her belly, pinning her to the table. She suddenly froze, and then she screamed and he felt hot warm liquid begin to dribble down his chin. He growled hungrily into her cunt as she squirted into his mouth, her scream turning ragged and starting to break as her orgasm continued to crest over her. His cock was screaming to be released from his trousers and be buried into that wet miracle. She did not stop screaming even as he felt her start to contract again, and this time she started to buck and jerk wildly as she pushed out a new orgasm while he continued to fuck her ruthlessly with his hand. Her scream became a ragged sob, and he finally pulled his fingers out of her to offer her just a moment of relief. She laid on the table, her eyes glazed, shuddering as her nerves still sparked up in waves while he unceremoniously shucked his trousers as quickly as he possibly could. Cradling her head with his hand and putting the other behind the small of her back, he lifted her quivering form up off of the table and kissed her gently on the mouth. She responded immediately despite her apparent state of ruin, and he pulled her off of the table and stood her up in front of him only to turn her around, so she was pressed against the island. His cock, hard and warm, pressed against her ass. She moaned in anticipation, spreading her feet farther apart and standing on her tip toes. He felt huge, the kind of huge she had always liked. The kind that was a little scary to other people, in her experience. She did like to be overwhelmed, after all.

Without much ceremony, except to run one hand around to her front side and down to her clit and begin petting it gently, he took his aching cock in his other hand and positioned it under her opening. He eased the head inside of her, and he felt her moaning through the walls of her cunt as he slowly pushed it up into her, and she sank back down onto her flat feet, devouring him greedily. For an instant, he paused to take in the feeling of her, his body nearly vibrating with pleasure. Then, he began to draw back, and thrust back into her. At first he went more slowly and gently, but he didn’t have much to fear with her cunt already dripping, her gasps and moans begging for more. She bent slightly over the marble top of the island, her cries beginning to stutter, propping herself up with her hands. Lucifer continued to work her clit with one hand, cupping her breast with the other hand to squeeze the nipple gently. She began to whimper and groan and suck in air in time with his quickening pace. Her walls were so tight around his thick cock, and getting tighter. He felt like he was starting to see spots in his vision, and his nerves were tangling up in knots.

“Fuck, Sera,” he growled, and pulled her torso up off of the table and back up against his. He felt her gasp and begin to let out one continuous moan at the change of position that brought new, even firmer pressure to her. He was rubbing her bright red clit mercilessly now, which was so swollen that it stood well above the lips that usually protected it. Her head was thrown back against his shoulder and next to his own, her breathy sounds heating his cheek and ear. Little oh, gods began to escape her, steadily increasing in volume.  
  
“Oh _God_!” she screamed, and the contractions started. He pounded into her, and the fact that they were standing up applied abundant extra pressure on both of them. He wasn’t sure her feet were even touching the ground anymore at that point, as he gripped her upper torso to his and drove his cock as deep as he possibly could. Finally the push arrived, and he almost came as her walls clamped down like a vice around him. Almost. She was trying to scream as she came all over the floor, their legs, the island. But her voice was already going hoarse, and she kept on screaming anyway. Lucifer found himself staring down, watching her shudder violently under his hand, over his cock, feeling her body convulse. She began to sob as he fucked her right through her orgasm, and yet another crested over her. And another. And another. He was starting to lose count, and grew increasingly more shocked and delighted. After a while it seemed as though there was no break in the climax at all, and she nearly spoke in tongues. Finally the walls of her cunt, desperate to protect her from unconsciousness, gripped him so hard that he finally let go, and the electricity all fled his fingers and toes and everywhere else in his body to shoot out of him and into her, his unholy seed spilling and mingling with her angelic interior.

Now that had to be blasphemous.

He helped her put her feet back on the floor, tugging himself out of her and holding her up and close to him. Their sweat-drenched bodies touching from shoulders to thighs, he lingered there for a moment to feel her warmth before he whisked her up into his arms and strode into the master bedroom to lay her limp, trembling body on his enormous bed. She really looked like a fallen angel to him now, beautiful beyond description, weak with ecstasy, drenched in the water of life. Her hands reached for him, but her eyes seemed to be looking somewhere much farther away than anything around them. He climbed onto the bed next to her to cradle her in his arms, stroking her face gently.

He remained silent, reverent, as he watched her ride the ebbing tide of her orgasms. She seemed to be gasping, but slowly. Her body would shudder and twitch from her lower belly outwards once in a while, and her eyes fluttered shut and open again as the pupils, blown wide open, seemed to search some unknowable landscape that she saw behind the world. Gently she floated back to earth, her breaths beginning to even out and her hands beginning to move intentionally to touch the skin of his bicep. Finally her gaze began to focus, and it fell until it landed on him. Her eyes seemed endless, and this time it was as if he was looking into her instead of the other way around. She looked almost as worshipful as he felt, staring at him in a state of awe and deep trust that he had not seen since… since the last time they fought together, brandishing God’s power against the wilds of the world, bringing its creatures to the light, grappling with the early sins of consciousness. That was the battle, before he had been cast out. Not so much bloodshed, or the annihilation of demons, but the war of holiness within the baseness of life as it crept out of Mother’s womb. Before humanity was born there had been sin, in their early ancestors and even in animals no longer even considered sentient by human pride. And once he and Seraphiel had sung praises in harmony, and rooted out ugliness and hurt together. It was battle of a profoundly intimate kind, he realized. He had once been so devoted to the salvation of even the smallest creatures. It shook him to see that look there again, and in such a profoundly different context.

“Hey,” he whispered to her, smiling. “Welcome back,” It took her a moment to process his words.

“H-hello,” she replied shakily, managing her own watery smile. “T-that was… something,” He laughed.

“Something? It certainly was,” he agreed. “Something new, for me,”

“What was new?” she asked.

“You really do kick,” he replied, skirting the real question of the strange and holy experience he had just had. She gave an exhausted little laugh.

“I told you,” she sighed, content filling her voice.

“What you didn’t tell me is that you’re a squirter!” he accused playfully. She snickered.

“Oh yeah, that’s my fault, I forgot it still surprises people. I hope that it’s alright because I can’t help it,”

“It’s a perfect joy. So encouraging,” he grinned a crooked grin. She looked up at him, her contented smile turning mischievous.

“Do you give everyone you fuck a fifteen-minute orgasm?” He felt his pride swelling.

“Well, not everyone,” said nonchalantly. “Some people just can’t take the stimulation,” She raised an eyebrow and looked at him knowingly.

“I see,” was all she said. He just grinned at her for a moment.

“Would you like a glass of water?” he asked very politely. “You must be quite tuckered out,”

“Blessedly so,” she agreed. “Thank you, I’d love some,” Kissing her with fierce tenderness, he slid out of the bed towards the kitchen. She watched his ass as he went, impressed. She mused that it had not taken long for their relationship to become intimately physical, after what felt like aeons of frustration. She began to hazily realize that the bitterness with which they had always fought each other was at least partly fueled by an intense desire to be reconciled.

But did they long so fiercely to be reconciled with each other, or with God? Was there a difference? She could hear his bare feet padding back towards the master bedroom. She sighed, and rolled onto her side to watch his entrance. She felt her cool skin tingle in anticipation of being wrapped in his warm arms.

She did not have to worry about it right now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn, y'all. Turns out having flesh is a pretty good way to commit sins of it ;) I reckon now it's back to the plot... and time to edit the tags...


	6. Heaven Sent

_There was a dark place. The smell of it was deeper than musk, full of hunger, and elementally frightening. Out of the shadows, the guttural growls were quiet, lower than human hearing. They seemed to come and go but never to grow more intense or loud. Great breaths could be heard rattling through the air. The sources of these sounds seemed to be circling around in the dark._

_“O God,” came a hoarse whisper. “O God, have You stayed them? They do not attack me. They do not even sniff me. Am I to die here?”_

_The growls quieted a little, then. They seemed to stop moving, their breaths smooth now, and their hackles lowered._

_“Forgive me, my God, if I have sinned I know not how, but I trust Your judgement. I will abide by it. Only I beg You would allow me to right those wrongs before I am devoured,” The man’s voice was wavering, sputtering with the tears that come before death. His words were impressively calm, but the white-hot terror was ripping through him. To a demon, it would have been as the aroma from a meal before the first bite._

_The lions were all around him. They were quieted, but this did not comfort him. They breathed on him, and their breath was hot and clung to him and pulled the sweat from him. His body spasmed and shook as he prayed, trying desperately to chose between fight and flight but knowing that he could chose neither. Not knowing how he did not simply chose one anyway, not knowing how he overcame that most basic of instincts, he prayed._

_“God, if You have stayed my death, then let me please know what it is that I must do to repay You. I would serve You all my days, as You know, but if I have merited Your mercy upon any other condition only reveal it to me and I will carry out Your will,” His voice was growing calmer, because the lions seemed to be growing calmer. He was on his knees in the dirt and the excrement of the enormous cats, and as he prayed his head bent lower and lower until it rested on the tops of his legs. He had shut his eyes despite the darkness around him, and tears flower silently out of them. Just as he was beginning to feel calm, thinking he could sit in that pained posture and listen to the sounds of sleeping lions around him all night if he must, one of them began to move. Hies eyes flew open, but he was greeted with no light. He did not move, only felt his heart beat as if to break the cage of his ribs. Felt the sweat and the clammy terror and the intense panic of whether to run to his death or to face it. He did not even breathe as the great creature slowly padded towards him, the great huffs of its breath growing ominously louder. He could not conceive of dying, even after all of these years of trying to imagine it. He could not imagine a city of gold in the vast heavens, or an enormous field of grassy knolls by the white beaches of some celestial ocean. He could conjure no image he had pondered or been told, could not even conceive of the rip of his soul from this world into the next. He could only smell his own rank fear, and see nothing at all in the darkness. The lion was immediately before him now, and had stopped. Its great shaggy head and matted mane seemed to tower over him, its softest growling seemed like an infinitely enormous drum._

_“Rise, Daniel,” came a voice, at once soft and small as if in his very ear, and thunderously loud, echoing much farther than the cavern’s limits could have confined it. He nearly choked, his hands hitting the dirt before him, splayed out to keep him from crumpling. He began to sob, and to shakily pull one knee out from under him and then the other, placing his feet on the ground one a time. Shaking violently, he stood, but his posture remained hunched and his eyes were glued to the ground before him._

_“Be at ease, son of God,” came the voice again, and this time it seemed to gather itself more into the space around him. It was beautiful, a low androgynous sound filled with soothing light and an almost musical quality. He dared not look up to seek its source, for even in that utter darkness he feared to look upon something he should not._

_“You have been faithful these little years of your life, almost all of them. You have turned to holy places and sought to humble yourself before God, even at great risk to yourself,” the voice soothed him. He began to feel his terror ebb, the knotted ropes of his muscles begin to loosen. His tears began to fall freely, a mixture of relief and the feeing of being less than an ant, and yet forgiven._

_“You are not forsaken. However, you must know God’s will,” A tone of seriousness crept into the voice, and a faint golden light seemed to be appearing above his head. He felt himself trembling, uncertain what was unfolding around him._

_“Look upon me, Daniel,” the voice commanded, and he felt his lip begin to stutter and a sob rise in his throat. “For I am called Seraphiel, and I am an Angel of the Light,” He was terrified to see it, even though he had always dreamed an angel would be so immensely beautiful as to be beyond description. He realized he still believed this was true, but that while it sounded lovely in the mouth, here before him that very same sentiment seemed to elicit the tremors of madness. He lifted his eyes very slowly._

_Before him, there stood the most massive lion. Its mane was thick and dark, and it was very old. Its eyes were rich and amber-colored, and they looked directly at him._

_Then, he saw. He saw the angel there, reflected in those profoundly sentient eyes, and he knew it was looking into him as well as at him. He knew it was powerful, and terrible. Its form was incomprehensible, appareled in light, ever-shifting. He knew if he looked upon it when it was not cloaked or mirrored in this or some other earthly form, he would lose himself in the glory of God. He stared, stuck with awe and wonder._

_“Do you see the little girl, Daniel?” the voice asked him. His brow knitted, confused._

_“The little girl?” he repeated. Suddenly in the eyes of the lion he seemed to see a child, swaddled in filthy linen, tucked under the bosom of a woman whose face was hidden in the hood of her garment. The child was very young, but her eyes were alight, and it was as if she too was looking into him, piercing his heart. He gasped in air, speechless._

_“Do you know your daughter?” the voice asked. It was even and without malice. He felt fresh tears welling in his eyes._

_“She_ is _mine,” he breathed, uncertain how or why but knowing it to be true._

_“Do you know her mother?” In his vision within the amber fog of the lion’s eyes, her head shifted enough that the cloth of her hood fell away from her face. His breath caught._

_“I know her,” was all he could say._

_“The child is old, now,” the voice said, softly. “Her mother is dying. They are together, poor and hungry, in the great city of Babylon where the kings eat gold and the little people eat pebble-stones, and neither see that they are both rocks,” Here the voice grew sharp, and he felt that something was moving beneath the words, deeper than their given meanings, deeper than connotations. He felt that his soul was hanging in the fog of those words._

_“May you seek to ease the pain of her passing, as you have failed to ease the course of her life,” the voice said, returning to a calm tone. “For they are blood of your blood, and greatly have they suffered for your forgetfulness, and your daughter too, for it is never too late to bear the burden of fatherhood, the responsibility of another human life which you invoked that night when you lay beside her mother, young and unafraid,” The old man’s face showed his shock, his sorrow, his willingness._

_“O my Lord, my God, I have heard Your messenger. You have stayed the jaws of lions that I may carry out Your will, and here I pledge my body and soul to Your task,”_

_“Yours have always been eloquent words spoken unto God,” the angel told him. “But do not lose sight of your task before it is completed. Flourish of words will not sway His judgement. Make good on this promise, and your heart will know the fathomlessness of God’s love,”_

_As if all the night had passed in those several minutes, a crack of sunlight appeared in the rock far above his head, and the angel and the enormous shaggy lion were both gone, as if they had never been present at all._

_“Daniel!” came an authoritative bellow from the opening in the stone. “Servant of of the living God! Has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?” It was the King of Babylon. It was sunlight. It was morning, and he was free. The lions stood around him in a circle, watching the opening in the rock. Although, some seemed to be watching the place where he guessed the angel had been, hanging behind his head to speak to him through the eyes of a lion._

_“O King! May you live forever!” the man cried joyfully. The King let out a whoop, and almost instantly a rope ladder was cast down._

  
Seraphiel was awakened suddenly, but not violently, from her dream by a rustle and a body gently forming to hers, warm breath landing on the nape of her neck. She felt wrapped in the softness of clouds, the warmth of a bonfire, the contentedness of death. She rustled to ease the soreness in her hip and turned towards the warm body next to her. Her eyes, bleary and not quite open, just barely caught the dark hair and strong brow, the rake of cheekbones, the soft black stubble. Her thoughts did not consciously register meaning to the half-seen features, only she felt a tenderness flooding her, and it made her feel safe. Lulled by the deeply human comfort, she fell asleep again.

  
_“God sent to me an Angel!” cried the man in delight as he began to climb the rope swing. The King was laughing in relief, and even in awe. “And shut the lion’s mouths to me! God has found me redeemable in His sight. And neither have I ever done wrong by you, my King.”_

_“Carry yourself upwards that I may hear of this miracle!” the King replied. The man blinked his tears of joy from his eyes as he climbed the knotted rope, his pace steady despite his aging body. He felt as giddy as he was humbled. One hand over the other he climbed, and he thought of his daughter… and her mother._

_“When I return to the city I will seek them out,” he said quietly to himself. “I will find them and theirs will be the best suite in the palace, the sweetest fruit, the softest silks. My daughter will live out her days as a noblewoman, and my lost love—“_

_Suddenly he realized that he had put his hand above the next knot to pull himself upwards, but it felt unlike the coarse rope the ladder was made of. He looked up at his hand, and saw that there was a serpent twisting along it, sandy and dark brown. He froze, shocked. Before he could fully understand what was happening to him, the serpent lifted its head and flared its hood, hissing. For less than an instant, its red eyes met his. Then it struck his hand, sinking its fangs into him in one hot, acrid bite._

_“Ah!” he cried, and the pain was like a thousand blisters from a fire. He snatched his hand away, but the force of his reaction was too much for his feet. First they slipped off of the rope, then his remaining arm was yanked by his own weight. He felt the shoulder and the elbow pull totally away from their attaching parts, and he screamed in agony. The pain was so great that he could not have held on with only one hand any longer, and with the serpent still hanging on by its clamped jaw, he plunged into the darkness. He barely registered the growling and snapping of the lions below, before darkness took him. The King looked on in horror._

_“NO!”_

  
“SERA!” called a familiar voice.

“NO!” she replied from within the shadow between dreaming and waking. A hand took her shoulder firmly and shook her.

“Sera, it’s alright! It’s me! It’s Lucifer, I’m here!” he said, and her eyes fluttered open as she realized she had been dreaming. Dreaming… about Daniel? Daniel was one of her most tender memories… He had thought he was faithful, but he had a single repentance to ask before he would be allowed to cross the threshold of Heaven. But… he had not been bitten by a cobra, in her memory. But the dream was so vivid, and so awful, that her hand ached where she had watched the snake strike him.

“He… he didn’t…” Seraphiel was struggling to articulate the nightmare, and her eyes slowly not only looked at Lucifer, but registered who he was, and flew wide open. She stopped moving, frozen in the strange and horrible feeling creeping over her that the serpent of her dream had been him. Suddenly she was hyperaware of his arm around her, and his hand which was cradling her face, and the impossible heat of his body.

“Sera, it’s alright, it was just a dream,” he said, and his voice was so velvety and gentle that her oldest memory of it caused her to relax. _Samael…_

“It was Daniel,” she whispered. Part of her still wanted to recoil from him, the dream leaving an unsettling imprint on her skin where his hands touched it. But more of her was so ancient and so tired, and just wanted to be held, and to remember when she loved him. Lucifer brought his face down close to hers, nuzzling her cheek with his nose.

“Daniel, the man you saved from the lion’s den?” he asked her softly.

“Me, or your Father?” she asked, and when he pulled back to look at her with a quizzical expression he found her eyes looking immense and sad.

“I don’t know,” she answered her own question. “I don’t know, but in my dream, a snake bit him before he finished climbing out of the den,” Lucifer flinched. A serpent had always been one of his favorite forms to take on Earth in the early days, when his power still felt new and raw, and watching humans recoil from him had been most amusing. Sera did not miss his response, and continued to look up at him. Her lower lip almost trembled.

“Please,” he implored her. “It was just a dream. I would not harm you now, not willingly,”

“It wasn’t me, it was Daniel,” she said, but it was not accusing. “The serpent bit him before he could carry out his promise. I woke up as he was falling back to the lions. The terror I felt… I didn’t know if he would still be let into Heaven or not,” Lucifer looked at her. Even after actual aeons of distancing himself from his Father and His followers, from his siblings and his subordinates, of distancing himself from _her_ , he still felt the twist in his gut. The feeling of the moment where whatever it was that had been in place to enable the souls who hung by a thread to enter Heaven, it was no longer there. It no longer mattered, and they would not know for some time where the soul ended up.

“Do you think me evil?” he asked her finally, his heart heavy.

“No,” she replied, looking him directly in the eye. The simple, factual nature of her statement sent relief washing over him. “Diverting a soul so close to salvation intentionally would be evil,” she added. “But if you were to do something like that, you would be punishing the guilty. I assume you would be punishing Daniel for his neglect of his bastard child and her mother. What I can’t decide is if the dream meant that our two purposes were at odds, or if the man was not so close to salvation as I thought,”

Lucifer let that thought sink in. He did not believe that angels had dreams that were meaningless, even fallen ones. He stroked Sera’s smooth cheek with his thumb, his eyes wandering over her jaw and the soft curve of her neck down into her strong shoulder, her clavicle drawing shadows across it. He had no words at that moment, and could only let the emotion sink in. Worry, confusion, curiosity, and the faintest sense of dread. Father’s plot regarding Chloe Decker, whatever it had been, had been thwarted somehow. He knew he had held back from truly surrendering to his love for her. He did not know why, or rather he didn’t know if there was a reason other than his own fear that had influenced him. But he wondered how much of his Father’s will was at play here again. He wondered if God had sent Seraphiel back to him for some purpose even she was not aware of.

“Lucifer,” Her voice was soft, and it drew him effortlessly out of his thoughts. It sounded so much like music. He looked back to her face, brow furrowed. “It was just a dream. To keep in mind, but a dream nonetheless,” she said.

Then the angel lifted her head up to meet his and kissed him so softly, yet so fiercely, that he actually felt the heart in his human (human-like?) body skip a beat. For a little while, at least, the lingering anxiousness he felt sinking into him disappeared into her mouth, her breathy sighs, her soft hands on his face.


	7. Hellbent

Lucifer sat on the ever-stiff couch in Dr. Martin’s office, strangely reluctant to reveal anything about his new situation to her. It wasn’t out of mistrust, or necessarily fear of vulnerability (despite it being well-established that he did have some fear of that, albeit in particular ways.) He felt strangely reluctant to reveal Seraphiel’s presence to anyone who didn’t know her to be an angel already. Perhaps it was the acute indignity and pain of being one of the Fallen. Even after several years, it was almost like outing someone who was gay— not that he hadn’t accidentally done just that several times, by virtue of his Devilish hunger for secret desires. But it still felt inappropriate.

“Hell Lucifer,” Dr. Martin said in her prim but by now almost warm tone of voice. “I haven’t seen you in a while,”

“No, not since the incident,” Lucifer said, giving a rather half-hearted chuckle and fiddling with the cuff of his jacket sleeve.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Not my best, as I’m sure you could have guessed,” he replied. “Things are… complicated,”

“How so?” she asked him, curious.

“Erm,” he said, unsure how to approach the subject or whether or not to leave Seraphiel out entirely. “Well, I’ve had some suspicions that my father sent Chloe my way for a very distinct purpose, and that somehow that purpose was thwarted. I’ve struggled to pin down exactly why, though,”

“Why he sent her, or why it was thwarted?”

“Somewhat of both. I mean I don’t fathom why he thought bringing love like that into my life would render me accepting of my part in ruling Hell,” he said. “Even if I had done so, it would have been so grudgingly, and you and I both know how willing I am to continue any effort out of a sense of obligation,” Dr. Martin’s wry smile was not condescending.

“That we do. Any theories about what caused that purpose to fail?”

“It’s hard to say exactly, what with the purpose being unclear and all,”

“Fair enough,”

“But either way, it is irksome,”

“Feeling like a pawn again, Lucifer?” she asked him, one eyebrow raised. The Devil rolled his eyes and pouted.

“Obviously. And now I suspect almost everything to be something dear old Dad’s been plotting all along,” he huffed. “It’s most inhibitive of having a good time,”

“I could see why. Feeling like you’re not actually in control of any choice you’re making would easily make it hard to savor even the most rebellious of choices,” The doctor seemed to think for a moment. “You’re still attached to that role, I assume, the rebel?”

“Well, I suppose so. Tempered somewhat by what a drag it is to feel that even your rebellion isn’t your own,”

“But that might not always be the case,” the doctor offered. “I mean, I doubt your Father planned for you to launch yourself from Heaven, cut off your own wings, and then burn them. I doubt He planned to send Chloe specifically to fail, although I suppose you could argue that whatever that plan is, it might not be over. But I doubt He intended this particular setback,” Lucifer looked at her, surprised.

“No… I suppose He might not have,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t presume to know for sure, of course, but it does seem that at least He is trying to recover me to His purposes, making at least my initial rebellion a bit of a wrinkle in the old Predetermination theory,” He felt himself cheer up a bit, considering this. “Thank you doctor, you’ve been most reassuring this visit,” he said, and made to leave the office.

“But Lucifer,” Dr. Martin said, flustered.

“I promise I will return tomorrow with your payment in mind,” he told her, giving a charming grin.

“That’s not actually what I was going to ask,” she replied. He stopped, and turned to face her.

“Well, what were you going to ask?” he asked, puzzled, but willing to humor her.

“Well,” she said, eyeing him knowingly. “You haven’t explained to me why it is that you’re not talking about Chloe from a personal standpoint,”

“How do you mean? I’m certainly considering the end of our relationship as reason a _personal_ event that appears to contain some _personal_ secret that might explain what my Father is up to, all of this is quite _personal_ if you ask me,”

“Well yes, but I expected you to be a little more sad, or resentful, or something like that,” she replied, gesticulating the potential emotions with her hands. “Most people who get dumped have at least one of those emotions going on at any given time, you know,”

“What, about the Detective? Nope, I’m not terribly worried about her at this moment, though the moment I am I promise you’ll be the first to know,” he said, and made once again to scamper towards the exit.

“Oh come on, Lucifer, what are you so damn happy about?” she accused. “Are you rebounding with someone new, or what?” He froze with his hand on the doorknob, an expression of nervous irritation working its way across his face.

“How would you know about that, Dr. Martin?” he asked her, his smile becoming forced. She stared at him for just a moment, confused.

“Know about what? Wait, so you are rebounding with someone new?” Hey eyebrows shot up. The Devil grimaced.

“Ah, yes, but I’m not at liberty to discuss that at this time,” he said, giving her a dismissive little grin. “Goodbye, Linda!” He opened the door and nearly sprinted away.

“It’s called doctor-patient confidentiality, Lucifer!” she called after him, but he was already gone. “Ugh,” she huffed, brushing her bangs out of her face and shutting her office door. Next time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short little chapter, just because you have to have a little fun with your psychiatrist once in a while, don't you?
> 
> APRIL 25, 2017: edited out implied sexytimes between Dr. Linda and Lucifer because I really like that her character made that choice in the show so I'm staying true to that bit of canon, at least. Not sure at what point the canonical divergence will have to be total for the sake of the plot, right now I'm actually trying to keep it to where new information from the show can still be allowed in this fic because I really enjoy the way it's playing with the angels and archangels and Lucifer's mother and whatnot. We'll just have to see how it goes!


	8. Born Again

Inside of a dark, empty apartment, Chloe Decker stood looking at her oven’s clock. It read 1:33 AM. It would almost have distressed her to see it, had it not become a regular occurrence. Since the week after she had broken up with Lucifer and left Los Angeles, she hadn’t been sleeping very well. Sometimes she hadn’t been sleeping at all. She was due at the precinct in the morning at 8 AM, as always. She had dealt with getting little sleep for most of her life as a detective in LA, but that had been the whole point of moving to Florida. If police work in California had been a circus, Gainesville FL was like a single mime on the street in New York City with his upturned hat on the ground. Sometimes there was something of note, but mostly it was far from unusual or exciting detective work. Chloe had not wanted unusual or exciting, she had wanted to be quite bored and at home with her daughter much more frequently, sleeping regularly and maybe taking up a hobby. So far she had been mired in mostly bureaucratic paperwork, incompetent and sometimes appallingly crass police officers, and a brand new case of insomnia. She spent most of her minutes trying very, very hard not to think about Lucifer Morningstar.

“Mommy?” came a voice softly from the bedroom door. Chloe looked over her shoulder.

“What, honey?” she asked. Trixie was holding her pillow under her arm and looking bleary-eyed.

“I can’t stay asleep,” she said, walking out into the kitchen and frowning. “My throat hurts,”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Chloe said, taking her daughter into her arms and hugging her. “I can get you some NyQuil,”

“Why are you awake, mommy? Do you have a sore throat now too?” Trixie asked, ever observant.

“No, I don’t. I just can’t sleep,” she replied.

“For no reason?” her daughter asked.

“Nope,” Chloe said. Well, maybe there was a reason, but she still wasn’t sure what it was.

“Maybe you need to go to the doctor too,” Trixie advised very somberly.

“Maybe I do. Or maybe I just need some homemade hot chocolate to make me sleepy,”

“Can I have some?” Trixie looked excited. Chloe smiled knowingly and replied, “Only if you go into your room and put your wrap back on your throat,” Trixie’s face fell. Her chin and throat were shiny with Vicks Vapo-rub, but the cloth that her mother had used to keep it from getting all over her bed was gone. Trixie had vocally opposed the cloth in the past, saying it was itchy and she didn’t like it, but since she was met with motherly opposition she usually took it off after she was put to bed. To her mind, she hadn’t yet been caught doing so because she would put it back on in the morning before she was discovered.

“Okay,” she conceded grumpily, trudging back into her room to tie her wrap back on. Chloe shook her head and proceeded to take sugar and cocoa out of the kitchen cabinet, and a gallon of milk out of the fridge. She was heating up the saucepan when her daughter reemerged, looking very put-upon.

“Is this okay?” Trixie asked. She had re-tied the cloth around her neck quite a bit looser than her mother had initially done.

“It’ll do for now,” Chloe replied, beginning to mix the sugar and cocoa powder in the saucepan with a little water. She stirred the mixture with her wooden spoon as it began to form into a paste.

“Mommy, will we go back to see Daddy soon?” Trixie asked after a short silence, and the question landed with a thud onto Chloe’s heart. She shut her eyes briefly before she started to gently pour the milk into the saucepan, mixing it with the cocoa paste.

“We’ll go back and visit Daddy soon,” she replied, hating herself for knowing that she was lying. She didn’t have the money to fly across the country, and wouldn’t have it anytime soon. She would go back and let Trixie visit Dan as soon as she could, but she had no idea at all when that might be possible. “But Mommy has to get settled in her new job first,”

“You said that a month ago about the furniture,” Trixie pointed out. Chloe felt the exasperation she often felt when her child showed that she was too shrewd for her own good.

“But getting settled in the apartment is part of the process of settling in at work,” she explained.

“But there’s still no furniture in the living room,” Trixie countered obstinately.

“Mommy has to find some that doesn’t cost that much money, honey,” Chloe sighed, and stirred the cocoa gently as it got warm enough to drink.

“Can’t Daddy help?” her daughter offered.

“No, sweetie, not right now,” she replied, too tired to pretend to an explanation.

“What about Lucifer?” Trixie asked. “He has money. He would help us,” Chloe suddenly felt aware of the abiding ache in her chest, the weight of her eyelids, the sorrow hiding in the pit of her stomach. She fought the tears before they even made their way to her eyes, swallowing them like stones.

“Lucifer can’t help us either honey, he has a lot of things to deal with right now,” she offered opaquely, aware in the back of her mind that she had no idea what Lucifer had to deal with right now, and maybe no idea what he had to deal with ever. “He’s been worrying a lot about money and since he and Mommy aren’t seeing each other anymore it would be very impolite to ask him to help,” She felt the strange wordless dissonance of superimposing her own feelings onto him when she spoke to Trixie.

“Is Lucifer okay?” the girl asked, her genuine like of the man (was he a man?) obvious in her quiet concern. The question surprised Chloe, as if it would be unusual for her daughter to ask after the wellbeing her ex-boyfriend. _Then again, it is unusual,_ she thought. _She’s asked about what they’re doing or where they are before, but not if they were okay or not._

“Lucifer is doing just fine, sweetheart,” she assured her daughter, pouring hot cocoa into two mugs on the counter and placing the saucepan gingerly back on the stove. She carried the two mugs over to the breakfast bar where her daughter had sat on one of the stools facing her. Trixie reached out for her mug in anticipation. Chloe had been meaning to hold back handing it over and ask about if the girl had re-applied her Vicks or not, but found she didn’t have any heart left for teasing. She knew that she would have to re-apply it herself and re-tie the cloth herself and put Trixie to bed with a dose of NyQuil and then maybe, just maybe, she might be exhausted enough to sleep for a couple of hours before she needed to wake up again and take her daughter to school and herself to work. She felt like she knew with brittle resignation exactly what the rest of her night would look like, and the rest of her week, and maybe the rest of the month. Thinking any farther beyond that was impossible. She drank her cocoa, watching as Trixie did the same.

“Alright, let’s get you fixed up and back to sleep,” she said as the girl placed her empty mug back on the breakfast bar. Trixie frowned, but followed her mother to the bathroom. She didn’t even complain as the Vicks was wiped onto her throat again, although she hated the smell. She stood still while her mother tied the cloth around her neck- more snugly than she wanted, but there was no way around that. She dutifully took her half-dose of NyQuil and climbed back into bed.

“Goodnight sweetie. If it still hurts this bad in the morning, I’ll call the school and tell them you’re sick and staying home tomorrow,” Chloe said, kissing her daughter’s forehead and feeling it with her hand, habitually seeking a fever. She felt a little warm, but nothing that was out of the ordinary for a sore throat.

“Can I have more cocoa tomorrow if I stay home?” Trixie asked, always the opportunist. Chloe smiled, the briefest flash of happiness making its way up to her face before it disappeared again.

“Yeah,” she said. “No problem. Now, go to sleep,”

“Okay. Thank you Mommy,” Trixie replied, grinning her signature grin and pulling her comforter up around her ears. Chloe waited until she had closed her eyes, and then walked quietly out of the room and shut the door behind her. Once out in the common room again, she looked at the empty carpet where a couch should have been. Instead there were several unopened moving boxes, two trash bags filled with the newspaper she had wrapped her dishes in, and a flatscreen TV that was much smaller than the one at her mother’s old house in LA. It looked as desolate as she felt. Suddenly, acute shame washed over her for leaving the house in this state for almost two months while her daughter was trying to adapt to moving across the entire country and starting at a new school where she knew no one, and apparently where they found her name confusing. The tears she had bullied away earlier rose twice as quick this time, gathering in little pools along her lower eyelashes, too hot and demanding to be denied this time. She sucked in a breath as they began to fall down her cheeks, and went back into the kitchen to clean up. She wept as she worked, trying to stifle her need to sob as she washed the mugs and put away the sugar and the cocoa and the milk. After she placed the saucepan on the dish rack to dry, a bleak silence fell over the apartment. Thin and watery moonlight crept in from the windows in the living room, and the branches of a dead tree outside cast shadows across them. Chloe looked out the window at the quiet street, at her neighbor’s house across the way that was set almost half a mile away from the road with a gravel driveway that led along the flat yard to the brick house. His orange tree was not yet blooming, his red Ford pickup truck was parked underneath it in the yard. She hadn’t met him yet, but the officers at the precinct had already warned her that he was resentful of the apartments built so far out into the rural land and so was unlikely to be accommodating in the event that she needed a cup of sugar or a screwdriver or something. She walked up to the window, looking over at the other building next to hers and the portion of the parking lot visible from this angle. The complex had three buildings, surrounded on most of its sides by nothing except swampy land and two or three brick houses along the road going back towards the center of town. It had been cheaply built on cheap land, and was sagging gently into the damp ground as evidenced by the parking lot which dipped strangely in the middle of the three buildings. It was all sining very, very slowly. Chloe hated herself for the accuracy of the metaphor. She returned her glance to the dead tree, which was a large one and she kept thinking that if it was ever struck by lightning, it would fall directly onto her building and maybe right through her window. She felt unusually nonplussed by this possibility at that moment, a bleakness creeping over her. She saw a large bird was sitting on one of the branches now, and he was grooming under his wing. She would usually have wondered what kind of bird it was, but the gray numbness she had been feeling stilled even passing thoughts.

That is, until the bird let out a sudden keening wail that ended in a terrifying screech. Chloe nearly jumped when she heard it, staring at the bird in confusion. _What the hell kind of bird makes that sound?_ she thought to herself. The bird was holding its wings halfway up, its large beak open. She could have sworn, for just one second, that it looked directly at her. Suddenly it screamed again, and took off from the dead branch so quickly that she almost couldn’t follow it with her eyes. The sound of the scream got thinner and quieter and more distant before it finally ended and the bird was gone. She realized she had been rooted to the spot and had even put her hand on her gun in response to the sound. It had been almost a human scream, but with something much less human coloring its tone. It was profoundly off-putting. Chloe shook her head and sighed once the shock of it had worn off, and took off her gun belt as she walked out of the living room and into her bedroom. Sitting down on the bed, she put her head in her hands and sighed again. Exhaustion must have made her extra surprised by the bird’s call, she reasoned, and since she was new to Florida, new to living in the country, and new to this entire half of America, she figured there were certainly going to be a lot of animals she was’t used to making noises at night now. Shaking her head, she pulled her jeans off and slid into bed, unwilling to even fully change into pajamas or brush her teeth. She laid there under the covers, silent and stiff as a board, praying for sleep. _If I’m going to be hearing hideous bird calls at night around here, I might really need to see a doctor about this insomnia problem._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for my long absence! Moving will really throw you off of your already questionable schedule.... anyway, here's ch 8! What the devil is up with Chloe Decker? (you can't make me apologize for my puns, I have no shame)


End file.
